


A Safe Place to Rest

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [106]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Insomnia, Lullabies, Pre-Relationship, Reader-Insert, Sleep, Talking, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:01:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25175806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: You’ve dealt with insomnia for as long as you can remember, but when someone in the Tower starts keeping you company, things start to change.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [106]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 8
Kudos: 216





	A Safe Place to Rest

Normal people weren’t afraid to go to sleep at night. Normal people got through their days successfully and then, at the end of the day, went through their nightly routines and then collapsed joyfully into bed. Normal people could fall asleep with very little trouble and sleep through the whole night, instead of lying awake for hours on end while their brain tortured them with memories and taunts.

You were used to getting very little sleep. By now, all the symptoms of sleep-deprivation had more or less just become part of your personality. If something magical happened and you started getting real sleep, literally every single one of your current friends would probably be shocked by the change. You’d tried so many home remedies over the years. No devices within a couple of hours before bedtime. No caffeine after after your morning coffee. Purposely exhausting yourself in the gym well before the evening came. Warm baths, cool showers, calming music, melatonin supplements, aromatherapy. Nothing helped. 

Around the same time that you moved into the Tower with the other Avengers, you sort of just gave up and accepted your fate. On the nights where memories didn’t keep you awake, your lovely fear of health ramifications of sleep deprivation did instead. Sleep was necessary. If someone didn’t get the right amount of sleep, their body was not in peak condition. Eventually, this whole thing was going to catch up with you, and you were going to fall apart. 

You dragged yourself out of bed with a heavy sigh. You’d done more than enough reading to know that, even if you couldn’t fall asleep, lying in bed and trying to rest still had great benefits for the body, but you couldn’t do it tonight. Tonight, it just seemed to taunt you. 

Ordinarily, you tried not to roam the Tower at night. The walls were very well-insulated, so you knew the odds of accidentally waking anybody up with any of your noises were relatively small, but it felt weird all the same. The common spaces were maybe a little creepy at night. In the day time, especially lately, they were often filled with easy companionship, with talk and laughter and friendliness, so in comparison to that, the stillness at night was kind of eerie. But tonight you needed a change. 

So you wandered.

The building had a quiet hum at night. Maybe it was the programming and machinery that kept things going. You had to imagine that the same hum was present during the day, but you couldn’t hear it over the bustling of life in the Tower. You trailed your fingertips along the wall as you walked. You didn’t have any particular destination in mind, other than maybe “not my room”. If you kept your body moving, you didn’t have to pay quite as much attention to the fact that your brain wouldn’t stop.

A noise, up ahead. Someone was in the kitchen. You paused in the hallway, contemplating. It was, of course, almost certainly a team member who probably had some difficulty sleeping as well. A strong part of you wanted to duck your head in and greet them, but what if they weren’t interested in company? You knew from conversation that Bucky had nightmares that kept him up at night, sometimes, but it was hard to imagine him wanting to see someone else in that state of mind. It also seemed a little dangerous. And the man had plenty of guilt without you letting him add clobbering you to the list. You crept a little closer to the doorway, and caught the familiar sound of the kettle going off. Someone was making tea. 

You could make tea. Even if whoever was in there had only heated enough water for themselves, you could go in and say hi and feel awkward only for as long as it took to heat up some water for yourself, and then you could flee immediately afterward if it was awful. You were pretty sure you still had some chamomile tea somewhere—it didn’t often help you actually fall asleep, but hell, maybe tonight would be different.

Whoever was in there pulled out a chair and took a seat. It was silly to stand out here like you needed to decide whether to go into the kitchen. You lived here just like that other person did. Maybe it was a little abnormal to be up and moving around at this time of night, but it wasn’t abnormal to go into the kitchen. So you drew in a deep breath and let it out, and then headed through the doorway.

Loki was at the table. He had one hand on the handle of his mug, and the other rested on the open pages of the book in front of him. He didn’t look up as you joined him, but something told you that he wasn’t quite reading, either. You greeted him quietly on your way to the counter, and didn’t hang back to wait for him to respond. He kept to himself a lot of the time. Sometimes Thor could drag him down for a movie or, if it had been several days, for dinner, but he rarely appeared in common spaces of the Tower without Thor beside him to make him stay. 

Not that you blamed him. There was still a little too much tension between him and some of the others, even though he’d spent ages working with you all by now. If Nat watched your every movement with that same cold stare she gave Loki, you’d probably spend a lot more time holed up in your room too.

He’d made a full kettle of hot water. You thought about thanking him quietly as you grabbed a mug out of the cupboard, but ultimately held your tongue. Maybe that was too presumptuous. Obviously he hadn’t made a full kettle because he’d known you were lurking.

“It took you long enough to get in here.” His voice made you want to shiver, but it had nothing to do with fear. He just had a way of speaking that absolutely fascinated you. His voice was deep and rick and lovely, and absolute elegance always clung to every word. He was regal, that’s all there was to it, and right now, in the stillness of the empty kitchen, you couldn’t help but savor the fact that he was talking only to you. 

It wasn’t super appropriate of you, but by now you were _pretty_ sure that he couldn’t read minds so you didn’t beat yourself up over it.

“What do you mean?” You turned your head to direct your words at him over your shoulder even as you measured out a bit of honey for your tea.

“Midgardians aren’t terribly stealthy. I heard you wandering through the hallways out there, and then I heard you fall still when you got close. Working up the nerve to investigate?” You couldn’t shake the feeling that he was smiling. He did not make a habit of trying to disguise his distaste for this whole planet, but there was a gentleness to his words tonight that made you feel like you didn’t need to defend yourself. You shrugged and turned to look at him.

“Not really. I was just trying to decide whether making tea was worth barging in on whoever was in here.” You picked up your mug and raised it towards him as though to illustrate your point. He closed his book and nodded at you.

“I applaud your courage. Who knows what beasts lurk here in the Tower in the depths of night.”

You shrugged one shoulder at him and peered down into the surface of your cup. The tea wasn’t nearly steeped enough for you to take a sip yet, so this was the next best thing. “Nah. Around here, it’s far more likely to run into a friend. I’ll get out of your hair now, though. Sorry for intruding. Have a good night, okay? I hope I’ll see you later.”

Maybe you took to roaming the halls at night a little more often. Loki wasn’t in the kitchen every night, but you did find yourself running into him on more of your trips out of your room. Joining him started to take less and less courage. One night, you stepped into the kitchen and saw that your mug was already sitting on the counter. Loki said very little that night, but you couldn’t shake the feeling that he was watching you with a quiet smile.

You started to join him at the table, or to follow him into one of the sitting rooms. He always had a book nearby, but slowly you began to realize that it was more of a safety net. He didn’t touch it when you joined him. He talked and even laughed with you and never gave any indication that he wanted you to leave him in peace so he could read. On your bad nights, nights after missions with just a little too much blood splashed about, he did open his book. But even then, you couldn’t shake the feeling that he did it more for your benefit. If you did find your voice on those nights, he closed it immediately and without any sign of being irritated.

Maybe the two of you fell into a routine. You spent so much time together in the dark of night that you learned how he took his tea. It wasn’t easy to guess when he’d join you—he certainly didn’t do it every night—but sometimes you would just feel something in your gut that made you certain he’d show up. So every once in a while, you took a chance on those gut feelings and made some tea for him so it’d be ready by the time he joined you. He did the same. Maybe it was silly, just how surprised and touched you’d been the first time you stepped into the kitchen only to discover that your favorite mug was already steaming merrily at your seat across from him, but tears stung your eyes anyway. He didn’t tease you when you thanked him tearfully, but he did look at you with something new in his eyes.

One night, the both of you wound up on the couch together. You sat side by side, with your legs stretched out before you to rest on the edge of the coffee table. For some reason, your socks captured your attention. They were old, and getting kind of threadbare, and they weren’t even from the same pair. You told yourself that it didn’t matter, that Loki had better things to think about than what you wore on your feet, of all things, but still…

He’d nudged your feet with his own, then, to get your attention, and finally asked the question you’d been dreading for months. He asked why you spent so much time awake in the dead of night.

You told him the truth, or some of it, anyway. “It’s hard to fall asleep.” You knew that he wasn’t asking you to tell him all about the nasty things that kept you awake. Talk about having better things to think about. 

But he hadn’t said anything in response. His silence felt heavy. Pressing. It made you certain that, no matter what you’d thought of him before, he was waiting to hear more from you. Just a few months ago, that would have been unthinkable. Before you started spending time with him at night like this, you mostly tried to give him his space. It was clear that Loki didn’t want to be here, and you definitely didn’t want to press yourself upon him. But the darkness that fell in around the two of you at night was like a disguise. It made it easier to ignore the inclinations that drove you in the light of day. So, tonight, you told him about the things that haunted you. 

At first, you made sure to intersperse your stories with plenty of dry laughter and self-deprecating comments, to make sure he knew that you understood how ridiculous you were. But he didn’t laugh with you. If anything, sometimes he made quiet sympathetic noises that made your heart stutter in your chest. So gradually, you stopped laughing at yourself. That made it easier for you to feel anger at the people who’d done this to you. Loki seemed to like that a little more. When you were finished speaking, he let the stillness expand between you. He did not immediately seek to add his own input about the horrors of your life. He let them settle. And he took your hand.

The next time you opened your eyes to the morning light, your head was in his lap and his fingers were in his hair. He looked pleased.

And when you sat up, cheeks burning, and swore to him that, the next time, it was his turn to fall asleep on you, his smile only grew.


End file.
